Carlisle Landel (landel at helios) wrote:
: In article <D253n1.D7o at world.std.com>,
: David W Wheat <Agblade at world.std.com> wrote:
: >Cynthia Donahey (cdonahey at freenet.columbus.oh.us) wrote:
: >
: (snip)
: >: the body cavities of certain spiders. Now what I want to know is if the
: >: monster in Alien is actually copied from the original, or did these people
: >: make up their own monster?
: >
: >There are hundreds, probably thousands of species that parasitize other
: >species by laying eggs in eggs, larvae, and adults. There are parasites
: >of parasites. I am not familiar with any that have a life cycle like
: >the aliens, where "facehuggers" emerge directly from alien eggs upon
: >approach of a suitable host. The facehuggers are mobile, too (see
: >"Aliens"). Then the adult emerges from the host, but before consuming it.
: >That doesn't sound like biology, but like "jumping out at you" fiction.
: >However, there may be something in nature that works that way (using the
: >host as a vector rather than a food source is common).
: >Regards,
: >David
: One of the things that really bothered me about the Alien sequels was
: that they started changing the life-cycle of the alien, which indeed
: was originally very much like that of a parasitic wasp. (This was even more
: clear in the book version.)
: Anyway, my recollection is that adult ticks climb up into bushes and
: then go into some sort of stasis until a suitable host wanders by, and
: then they wake up and jump onto their victim.
: And there are also plenty of parasites that cycle between species at
: different stages of the life cycle--malaria comes to mind--so that bit]
: wasn't so far-fetched, either.
: All-in-all, after seeing Alien, my response was that I sure was glad that
: I'm not a spider!
: Carlisle
Well, these responses have certainly been interesting. The Alien will
always be Icky Minnie to me/
Cindy